"The team is proud to announce the release of MATE Desktop 1.6. This release is a giant step forward from the 1.4 release. In this release, we have replaced many deprecated packages and libraries with new technologies available in GLib. We have also added a lot of new features to MATE." Look at those screenshots. This is what GNOME is supposed to be: elegant, understated, to-the-point. I should try this.

"The Dock/Launcher pushes the desktop further toward the Application-Centric end of the GUI spectrum. I prefer to be closer the Document-Centric end of the GUI spectrum.

This. It drives me nuts how far modern UIs go in trying to obstruct the file system from the user. Seems to me that it's an initiative driven by marketing concerns. I believe there was a story posted a while back regarding GNOME 3 developers' brand-based decision making. Why should a brand have to act as a middle man between me and my content? "